THE OBAMACARE MONEY PIT: An HHS Office of Inspector General audit reveals that almost $3 billion worth of Obamacare taxpayer subsidies (to help people buy the required health insurance) for a 4-month period between Jan.-April 2014 cannot be verified.  This is auditor-speak for “the money was wasted,” given to individuals who were not eligible to receive them under the law.

“[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made,” the OIG said. 

“CMS’s system of internal controls could not ensure that CMS made correct financial assistance payments,” they said.

The OIG reviewed subsidies paid to insurance companies between January and April 2014. The audit found that CMS did not have a process to “prevent or detect any possible substantial errors” in subsidy payments.

The OIG said the agency did not have a system to “ensure that financial assistance payments were made on behalf of confirmed enrollees and in the correct amounts.”

This is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only involves a snapshot of four months. But who cares about a few billion wasted tax dollars? After all, Obamacare is working–even for people who aren’t entitled to it!

BERNIE CLOSES THE GAP: The two most recent New Hampshire polls have Bernie Sanders within striking distance of Hillary Clinton, trailing by 10-12 percentage points. The Suffolk University poll shows a clear gender gap, with Clinton trailing Sanders among white men, with Sanders receiving 35 percent support versus Clinton’s 32 percent.

With such poor numbers against a relatively unknown socialist, Clinton’s candidacy is looking mighty shaky. It’s New Hampshire, of course, but it’s still not as left-leaning as its neighbor, Vermont, according to Gallup. And let’s not forget that, in 2008, Hillary Clinton upset Obama in the NH Democratic primary, 39 to 37 percent, despite losing independents by a significant margin. Her 2008 victory was attributed to her significant margin among women.

As recently as late April, Clinton enjoyed around a 20-40 point advantage over Sanders, so clearly something is shifting.

DARN RIGHT IT WAS A “TAKING”: A federal judge has ruled that the federal government’s forcible multi-billion dollar bailout of insurance giant AIG constituted a “taking” of private property without just compensation to its shareholders, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The bailout required AIG to turn over 80 percent of its stock to the US Treasury. After an 8-week bench trial, Judge Thomas Wheeler of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims concluded:

[T]he Federal Reserve Bank of New York had the authority to serve as a lender of last resort under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act in a time of “unusual and exigent circumstances,” 12 U.S.C. § 343 (2006), and to establish an interest rate “fixed with a view of accommodating commerce and business,” 12 U.S.C. § 357. However, Section 13(3) did not authorize the Federal Reserve Bank to acquire a borrower’s equity as consideration for the loan. . . .

[T]here is nothing in the Federal Reserve Act or in any other federal statute that would permit a Federal Reserve Bank to take over a private corporation and run its business as if the Government were the owner. Yet, that is precisely what FRBNY did. It is one thing for FRBNY to have made an $85 billion loan to AIG at exorbitant interest rates under Section 13(3), but it is quite another to direct the replacement of AIG’s Chief Executive Officer, and to take control of AIG’s business operations. A Federal Reserve Bank has no right to control and run a company to whom it has made a sizable loan.

Despite agreeing with the takings claim, Judge Wheeler denied the plaintiffs’ request for $40 billion in damages, concluding that “if not for the Government’s intervention, AIG would have filed for bankruptcy. In a bankruptcy proceeding, AIG’s shareholders would most likely have lost 100 percent of their stock value.” The lead plaintiff, former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg, has stated he will appeal the denial of damages.

RELATED: Seth Lipsky cogently argues that the decision illustrates the need for Congress to enact tougher restrictions on the Federal Reserve:

[T]he Fed handed over to the Treasury $22.7 billion in profit it made selling the equity it illegally seized in an AIG that supposedly was without value. That’s quite an incentive for the government to break the law.

All the more reason for Congress to address the larger questions raised by this astonishing case. Who watches the watchman? If ever a case put that question into sharp relief, this is it. And who better to answer than the Congress that created the Fed and has the formal oversight of the nation’s central bank?

It’s not as if the press has been on the job. It spent this trial down at the local bar having a drink with Marx and Engels—and laughing at the Bill of Rights. At the center of this case is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, the Constitution’s bedrock protection for private-property rights. It requires due process and just compensation before property can be taken for public use.

This seemed almost to offend the press. One dispatch in the Times called the case “ludicrous,” another “asinine.” The New Republic called it “mostly insane,” the New Yorker “absurdist comedy.” A headline in The Week called it “comically despicable.” A Bloomberg piece likened it to the slapstick courtroom classic “My Cousin Vinny.”

It strikes me that even the richest of Americans deserve more than such cynicism. How could the governors of our central bank, all of whom are bound by oath to support the Constitution, be so oblivious—or even hostile—to the parchment’s central protection of the property right?

Answer: because it was convenient for them to do so. As for Lipsky’s lamentations about the media’s cheerleading over the bailout’s terms. the mainstream media knows so pitifully little about the Constitution that they would cheer the forced quartering of troops in private homes next week if they thought it served some liberal/progressive cause.

NO, BUT IT’S SHAMEFULLY SLOW: Is the FDA sexist? The Agency’s delay in approving the “female viagra,” flibanserin, highlights the FDA’s frustrating, seemingly perpetual sluggishness:

So why the delay? For the most part, flibanserin isn’t a great medicine. Across three randomized clinical trials, the drug shows modest benefits while producing side effects such as low blood pressure, drowsiness, fainting and nausea. As many as 60% of women in those studies said they benefited from more sexually satisfying events, but the FDA says to adjust for the placebo effect the true number is merely 10%. . . .

[A] feminist pressure group called Even the Score—funded in part by Sprout—besieged the FDA with accusations of sexism. Other political organizations like NOW and NARAL joined in, while Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other Democratic Congresswomen accused the FDA of perpetuating “a gross disparity” of 24 approved treatments for male sex disorders and zero for women. . . .

But the real problem is that the FDA (whose former commissioner and pharmaceuticals division chief are both women) isn’t so much sexist as it is sociopathic. The paternalists who run the FDA are far more obsessed with phantom risks and protecting their own bureaucratic control over health care.

In this case they are instructing adult women that they should not be allowed to make their own informed choices about whether flibanserin is worth the potential side effects. If the drug is marginal, it is still better than the status quo and will help some subset of women. Feminists are right to be indignant about the delay, even if the FDA blockade is far worse morally in similar cases involving terminal or rare diseases.

I wrote about the need to privatize the FDA’s drug review process back in 1996. But absent privatization, there are numerous ways to break the FDA’s monopoly that would benefit patients waiting for access to new drug therapies, particularly drugs for terminal diseases and conditions such as cancer. A female viagra, even if only beneficial for 10 percent of women, would improve many lives.

MARK THIESSEN: Obama wants to reengineer your neighborhood.

This is what you get when you put a community organizer in the White House — he tries to reorganize your community from Washington.

Apparently, President Obama thinks your neighborhood may not be inclusive enough, so he has instructed his Department of Housing and Urban Development to issue a new rule called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which is designed to force communities to diversify.

According to the Obama administration, in too many neighborhoods “housing choices continue to be constrained through housing discrimination, the operation of housing markets, [and] investment choices by holders of capital.” (Yes, that is a quote from an actual HUD document, not a bad undergraduate thesis on Karl Marx.)

Under Obama’s proposed rule, the federal government will collect massive amounts of data on the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of thousands of local communities, looking for signs of “disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability in access to community assets.” Then the government will target communities with results it doesn’t like and use billions of dollars in federal grant money to bribe or blackmail them into changing their zoning and housing policies.

I’ve written before about the progressive, “utopian” plan to redistribute housing. It’s all very communistic.  But hey, in fairness, Obama told warned us that he wanted to “fundamentally transform[] the United States of America.” 

AFTER ALL, IT WAS WRITTEN BY A BUNCH OF OLD, DEAD ELITIST WHITE GUYS: Liberal law professor Thomas Ginsburg in the NY Times, “Stop Revering Magna Carta.”

One clause prevents Jews from charging interest on a debt held by an underage heir. Another limits women’s ability to bear witness to certain homicides. . . .

In reality, Magna Carta was a result of an intra-elite struggle, in which the nobles were chiefly concerned with their own privileges. When they referred to the judgment of one’s peers, for example, they were not thinking about a jury trial. . . . The reference to one’s peers meant that nobles could not be tried by commoners, who might include judges appointed by the king. . . .

Magna Carta has everything going for it to be venerated in the United States: It is old, it is English and, because no one has actually read the text, it is easy to invoke to fit current needs. . . .  Tea Party websites regularly invoke it in the battle against Obamacare.

So basically, in the eyes of liberals/progressives, the Magna Carta is just like the US Constitution: An over-revered document tainted, as liberal law professor Louis Michael Seidman asserted (also in the NY Times), by “archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.”

With attitudes like this it’s little wonder we are presently experiencing a crisis in respect for, and concomitant stability of, the rule of law.

RELATED: Rand Simberg’s apt thoughts on the Magna Carta and its modern salience.

BUT HEY, THE ACLU REALLY, REALLY SUPPORTS PRIVACY: Patrick Howley at the Daily Caller reports that the ACLU uses tracking software to monitor Capitol Hill Staffers.

The nonprofit civil liberties group uses a software system called “Capwiz” to insert cookies onto the computers of Capitol Hill staffers who click on links in the emails, multiple Capitol Hill offices recently discovered.

Ironically, the ACLU actually puts surveillance software into its emails campaigning against government surveillance. . . .

The ACLU’s method is similar to the practice of “spearfishing,” a tactic employed by the Chinese military.

But hey, their “heart” is in the right place, so that makes the ACLU’s surreptitious surveillance okay, just like the NSA.

SO BASICALLY EVERYTHING IS A MICROAGGRESSION: It’s official. The University of California, headed now by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, has gone insane with political correctness. The confirmation comes via its new “faculty training guide,” which has conveniently listed some microaggressions to be avoided in the classroom, including:

• “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
• “Affirmative action is racist.”
• “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.”
• “When I look at you, I don’t see color.”
• “I don’t believe in race.”
• “Gender plays no part in who we hire.”

Alumni of the UC system should immediately cease wasting their charitable dollars on such an anti-intellectual, fascist institution. And any intelligent young person should avoid it like the plague. The system has clearly been captured by individuals with micro-brains possessing micro-tolerance and micro-confidence. It is–like too many institutions of “higher” learning–a place where critical thinking goes to die.

ABANDONED IS PUTTING IT LIGHTLY: Israel’s former Ambassador to the US: “How Obama Abandoned Israel“:

Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental challenge by abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America.

The first principle was “no daylight.” The U.S. and Israel always could disagree but never openly. Doing so would encourage common enemies and render Israel vulnerable. . . . And yet, immediately after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel and America. . . .

The other core principle was “no surprises.” President Obama discarded it in his first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, in May 2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and Israeli acceptance of the two-state solution. The following month the president traveled to the Middle East, pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the Muslim world from Cairo.

Israeli leaders typically received advance copies of major American policy statements on the Middle East and could submit their comments. But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power, without consulting Israel. . . .

The abandonment of the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program. . . .

Finally, in 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy. The talks resulted in an interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis considered a “bad deal” with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr. Obama, though, insisted that Iran was a rational and potentially “very successful regional power.”

The daylight between Israel and the U.S. could not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president pledge that he “had their backs” and “was not bluffing” about the military option, only to watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that “a military solution cannot fix” the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been greater.

 Obama has been an unmitigated disaster for US-Israeli relations. 

DOLEZAL RESIGNS: The faux-black head of Spokane’s NAACP resigns, stating,“in the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP.” Despite NAACP’s formal statement of “support” for Dolezal, I suspect this was a forced resignation.

THE POPE GOES POLITICAL: A draft of “Laudato Si,” a encyclical on the environment, calls climate change an “urgent” matter caused by human activity.

In the draft, Pope Francis wrote of a “very consistent scientific consensus that we are in the presence of an alarming warming of the climactic system.”

While acknowledging that natural causes, including volcanic activity, play a role in climate change, the pope wrote, “numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) emitted above all due to human activity.”

The pope wrote that there is an “urgent and compelling” need for policies that reduce carbon emissions, among other ways, by “replacing fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”

According to The Guardian, the encyclical will have a decidedly anti-capitalist tinge:

The encyclical will go much further than strictly environmental concerns, say Vatican insiders. “Pope Francis has repeatedly stated that the environment is not only an economic or political issue, but is an anthropological and ethical matter,” said another of the pope’s advisers, Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Peru.

“It will address the issue of inequality in the distribution of resources and topics such as the wasting of food and the irresponsible exploitation of nature and the consequences for people’s life and health,” Barreto Jimeno told the Catholic News Service.

He was echoed by Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who coordinates the Vatican’s inner council of cardinals and is thought to reflect the pope’s political thinking . “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” Rodríguez Maradiaga said.

I’ve written about Pope Francis’s political inclinations and support of liberation theology before (here and here), so this doesn’t surprise me. The Pope’s aggressive entry into the global warming climate change debate recently caused the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to say, “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.” 

WELL, YES, SHE’S BELLIGERENT: Byron York: “Hillary Clinton: The Fightingest Fighter in the Fight.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the Four Freedoms. Hillary Rodham Clinton has the Four Fights. . . .

Indeed, in her speech, the former secretary of state suggested that she is so much a fighter that she will fight not one, not two, not three, but four fights on behalf of the American people. “If you’ll give me the chance, I’ll wage and win Four Fights for you,” Clinton told the crowd. Those fights are: 1) the fight “to make the economy work for everyday Americans”; 2) the fight “to strengthen America’s families”; 3) the fight “to harness all of America’s power, smarts, and values to maintain our leadership for peace, security, and prosperity”; and 4) the fight for “reforming our government and revitalizing our democracy.” . . .

It’s not clear whether Clinton’s characterization of herself as a fighter will resonate with voters. The last time she ran for president, in the most intense days of her Democratic primary battle with Barack Obama, Clinton did the same “fighter” thing, and it didn’t work.

The whole “I’m a fighter” theme is exhausting. I think most people would prefer a leader. We’ve had enough fighting, and it’s time for some problem solving. That takes leadership.

BETTING ON SCHOOL CHOICE: Clint Bolick explains Nevada’s new “Education Savings Account.”

ESAs allow parents to pull their children out of public schools and put the allotted tax dollars toward an education they prefer. This makes the phrase “school choice” a reality.

Unlike vouchers, which make public dollars available only for private-school tuition, the savings accounts can be used for a range of educational options, for private schools or distance learning, tutoring, computer software, educational therapies, public-school classes and activities, and community college classes. Any money left after graduation can be put toward college. This will give Nevada parents more than $5,000 to work with. . . .

The emergence of education savings accounts may mark the beginning of the end for an ossified education-delivery system that is has changed little since the 19th century. It begins an important shift of government from a monopoly provider of education into an enabler of education in whatever form or forum it most benefits the child.

Amen. Faster, please!

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, KEEP MOVING: Explaining away the Ferguson Effect. Heather MacDonald explains the price of anti-police agitation by the political left:

Faced with the prospect of ending up in a widely distributed video if an arrest goes awry, and possibly being indicted, officers tell me that they are increasingly reluctant to investigate suspicious behavior. St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last fall called the relationship between decreased enforcement and increased crime the “Ferguson effect.” I noted that if it continues the primary victims will be the millions of law-abiding residents of inner-city neighborhoods who rely on police to keep order.

A sharply critical response from some quarters greeted the article. It belonged to a “long line of conservative efforts to undermine racial equality,” wrote Columbia University law professor Bernard Harcourt in the Guardian, decrying the article as “crime fiction” intended to undermine “the country’s newest civil rights movement.” Charles Blow of the New York Times called me a “fear-mongering iron fist-er” who was using “racial pathology arguments” and “smearing the blood running in the street onto the hands holding the placards.” The article was part of a “growing backlash against police reform,” an attempt to “shame people who dare to speak up about police abuse,” wrote journalist Radley Balko in the Washington Post. . . .

Police are not backing off from what Mr. Blow and others presumably think of as “normal police work”: responding to 911 calls for emergency assistance. Officers continue to rush to crime scenes, sometimes getting shot at in the process. They are, however, refraining from precisely the kind of policing that many in the media, along with legions of activists, have denounced over the past year: pedestrian stops and enforcement of low-level, quality-of-life laws (known as “broken windows” policing). . . .

Many residents of high-crime areas don’t look at proactive and public-order enforcement the way their alleged advocates do. In a recent Quinnipiac poll of New York City voters, 61% of black respondents said they wanted the police to actively enforce quality-of-life laws in their neighborhood, compared with 59% of white voters.

There’s a difference between police harassment and proactive policing. The former exacerbates distrust of police and makes things worse. The latter improves the quality of life in a community. There is undoubtedly a need for police to be aware of the difference between the two, and receive training to understand the dividing line, for which attitude is important. But overplaying the race and “police are pigs” cards doesn’t advance the discussion; it only makes matters worse in high crime communities.

OF COURSE THEY DID: ISIS tweets Pam Geller’s home address. “#GoForth,” the Tweet urged via a hashtag after revealing Geller’s New York City address, apartment number and all. The Twitter account that sent out the address has since been suspended. I hope she owns a gun, and has some security guards.

THERE’S SOMETHING TO THIS: Philip Klein: If Republicans can’t beat Hillary, they should disband the party.

[T]he next election will test whether demographic headwinds are too much for Republicans to overcome.

As I noted the first time Clinton announced in April, the election result will hinge on whether Clinton can maintain the coalition of voters that elected President Obama twice. He achieved margins among minorities and young voters that far exceeded the historical margins for Democrats. Is that because, as a youthful African-American candidate, he had a special bond with these groups? Or has there been a more fundamental shift?

Everything Hillary Clinton does between now and Election Day should be viewed through the prism of these two questions.

In the speech today, it was clear how she intended to win over these groups through policy and emotional appeal.

Yep. The 2016 presidential election is a battle of color-blind, America-supporting rationalism versus race-obsessed, America-hating emotionalism.

THERE’S ONLY ONE SHADE OF “BLACK”:  . . . at least according to Slate writer Jamelle Bouie:

HE’S NOT A HERO: The encrypted files held by Edward Snowden have been hacked by Russian and Chinese officials, exposing the identities of U.S. and British spies.

MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, has withdrawn agents from overseas operations because Russian security services had broken into encrypted files held by American computer analyst Snowden. . . .

The files held by Snowden were encrypted, but now British officials believe both countries have hacked into the files, according to the report.

The newspaper quotes a series of anonymous sources from Downing Street, the Home Office and British intelligence saying that the documents contained intelligence techniques and information that would enable foreign powers to identify British and American spies. . . .

A “senior Home Office source” was also quoted by the newspaper, saying: “Putin didn’t give him asylum for nothing. His documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure and we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted.”

The Sunday Times also quoted a “British intelligence source” saying that Russian and Chinese officials would be examining Snowden’s material for “years to come”.

“Snowden has done incalculable damage,” the intelligence source reportedly said. “In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to prevent them from being identified and killed.”

Snowden’s disclosures about NSA metadata collection were essentially duplicative of earlier NSA whistleblowers, and by leaving the country and taking classified files with him, Snowden has done a good deal of damage to national security.

CLASSY: Hillary Clinton’s director of political engagement, Marlon Marshall, tells Clinton supporters in an email, “FU Republicans. Mafia till I die.” Not surprisingly, Marshall previously served as President Obama’s deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, a baldly political agency overseen by senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.”  That helps explain the mafia reference.

RELATED: In true Mafia style, two RNC staffers sporting “Stop Hillary” shirts were forced to turn their shirts inside out or be ejected from Clinton’s launch rally. Because, you know, Hillary isn’t really a fan of the First Amendment.

OF COURSE HE DOES: In trade defeat, Obama declares victory.

It is a common tactic in Washington to downplay bad news, but the White House brought it to a new level on Friday after House Democrats soundly defeated a package of free trade legislation that the president had personally implored them to pass. The White House chose to highlight the fact that one part of the package passed, even though two approvals were necessary to give Obama the trade authority he needs to negotiate the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” a chipper White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday, praising what he called “bipartisan support” for the legislation. The 126-302 defeat of a key trade measure was just a glitch: “To the surprise of very few, another procedural snafu has emerged. These kinds of entanglements are endemic to the House of Representatives.’’

But the truth was more complex, and more troubling for the president.

Yeah, you know Obama’s becoming a lame duck when he loses Nancy Pelosi.

WILL OBAMA APPROVE IT? The Pentagon is proposing the movement of heavy military equipment in Eastern Europe, to deter Russian aggression.

The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.

It would be the most prominent of a series of moves the United States and NATO have taken to bolster forces in the region and send a clear message of resolve to allies and to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, that the United States would defend the alliance’s members closest to the Russian frontier.

It’s the right move to protect our allies, who have recently asked the US to operate permanent military bases to deter Putin. The Pentagon says no final decision has been made yet regarding the proposal to move equipment.

BLAME IT ON BILL: CIA blamed Bill Clinton for bankrupting the Agency’s anti-terror effort prior to 9/11.

The Clinton administrationhad bankrupted the intelligence community and refused to let the CIA prioritize anti-terrorism over other major priorities in the late 1990s, leaving the agency stretched too thin in the days ahead of the 2001 terrorist attacks, former Director George J. Tenet said in a 2005 document declassified Friday.

Those pondering voting for Hillary because they want Bill Clinton back in the White House should consider that he had a horrible record on national security. Hillary wouldn’t be any better.

HE WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE: Dan Henninger: Bye, Bye American History. The College Board’s revised AP US History exam (APUSH), which I’ve written about before, is being finalized this summer, but not without some pushback. Henninger observes:

Last week, 56 professors and historians published a petition on the website of the National Association of Scholars, urging opposition to the College Board’s framework. Pushback against the new AP U.S. history curriculum has also emerged in Texas, Colorado, Tennessee, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia. . . .

Let’s cut to the chase. The notion that this revision, in the works for seven years, is just disinterested pedagogy is, well, claptrap. In the 1980s, Lynne Cheney, as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, threw down the gauntlet over the leftward, even Marxist, class-obsessed drift of American historiography. She lost.

At one point the curriculum’s authors say: “Debate and disagreement are central to the discipline of history, and thus to AP U.S. History as well.” This statement is phenomenally disingenuous. From Key Concept 1.3: “Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify their subjugation of Africans and American Indians, using several different rationales.” Pity the high-school or college student who puts up a hand to contest that anymore. They don’t. They know the Orwellian option now is to stay down.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld got attention this week for saying he understood why other comics such as Chris Rock have stopped performing on campuses beset by political correctness, trigger warnings and “microaggressions.” He said young people cry “racism,” “sexism” or “prejudice” without any idea of what they’re talking about.

How did that happen? It happened because weak school administrators and academics empowered tireless activists who forced all of American history and life through the four prisms of class, gender, ethnicity and identity. What emerged at the other end was one idea—guilt. I exist, therefore I must be guilty. Of something.

Yep. We are “guilty” of being American and must emphasize these four prisms–class, gender, ethnicity and identity–at every opportunity, as it allows us to constantly reopen useful wounds. We should probably also pay reparations. Oh wait, I guess that’s what a progressive income tax and a growing welfare state essentially are, albeit crudely. But paying reparations might be nice, so long as it didn’t allow us to actually, you know, put these “sins” behind us, since they’re so very politically useful.

WHEN BLACK IS WHITE, AND MEN ARE WOMEN: So now that NAACP’s Rachel Dolezal has been “outed” as “white,” it makes me wonder: What is “white” anyway? Okay, admittedly, Dolezal doesn’t appear to have any African ancestry in her blood, as her parents say she is of German, Czech, and Swedish ancestry, with a smidgen of Native American in there somewhere.

Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the famous “separate but equal” Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, was 7/8 white and 1/8 black, and so he was required, by Louisiana’s law, to ride in the “colored” railway car.  Plessy argued that he had a “right” to ride in the white railway car:

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in any mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is property in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called property.

But of course the Supreme Court never indicated how, exactly, Mr. Plessy could “prove” that he was “white”– i.e., how much “white blood” was required to be “white.”

Since Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court has generally not countenanced any race-based distinctions in law, as they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet the Court has, oddly, allowed race-conscious admissions programs in public universities, on the rationale that achieving racial “diversity” is a compelling government objective.  Yet clearly, this race-consciousness flows in one direction, in favor of “minority” students who are supposedly “underrepresented.” It does not seem to favor “overrepresented” minorities, such as Asians, who have recently filed a lawsuit against Harvard University, claiming they are discriminated against because they are too well-qualified.

So given the high importance the law apparently places on being a member of a “minority” group, how does the law decide whether an individual is a member of such a minority group?

The question arises more recently with our current President, Barack Obama, whose mother is white and father is black/Kenyan. Despite this 50/50 white/black ancestry, President Obama self-identifies as “black.”  But why? If one is of “mixed” race, may one simply choose whichever race one wishes?

What makes someone “black,” for example? Was Plessy really “black”? The railroad conductor thought he was. Is one’s race merely a subjective matter of self-identification?

Self-identification does appear, at least to the political left, to be the sine qua non of gender. Progressives/liberals have aggressively defended the “right” of Bruce Jenner to call himself a “woman,” if/when he so desires, despite the fact that he has not yet had his male genitalia removed, and will always have male XY chromosomes.

If gender is merely a matter of self-identification, should not race be also? I have always thought that, given the affirmative action-laden higher education admissions process, applicants should self-identify as “black” or “Native American” whenever they so desire.  I mean, why not? If they feel black or Native American, should not they be able to claim such an identity, as Rachel Dolezal has done? Doing so would quickly cause affirmative action to collapse of its own ridiculous weight.

Indeed, all of this race balkanization–with such extreme emphasis as belonging to this or that race–only further divides us, as race baiters like Al Sharpton well know. So why not accept the progressives’ terms of the debate–that our gender and race is all simply a matter of self-identity–and identify as a member of races that are favored/more protected by law? After all, no one can ever really know what lies in another’s heart. Does Bruce Jenner sincerely believe he is a female, or does he simply like to dress up in women’s clothes? Does Rachel Dolezal sincerely believe she is black? No one can possibly know the answer, perhaps not even Mr./Ms. Jenner and Ms. Dolezal.

What would a university do if an applicant self-identified as “black” on an application but showed up looking “white”? And if the university made such a judgment, what on earth would that mean? How would the university defend its belief that a student didn’t “look” black?  What sort of bizarre racial stereotypes would it rely upon in making such an appearance-based judgment? And if the university actually decided to take action against the student for racial misrepresentation, what on earth would that mean? How would the university judge whether the student was really “black”?  What percentage of blood would suffice for such a progressive institution? Fifty percent? Ten percent? One percent?

And if an individual, like Rachel Dolezal, has no black ancestry at all, would a progressive/liberal university allow her to self-identify as black, as they would (presumably) do for gender classification, if the student was born male and self-identified as a transgendered male (without yet having any surgery)? After all, the EEOC recently ruled in the Lusardi case that an individual in the Army who was born male, yet self-identified as female (but had not undergone surgery to remove his male genitalia) was to be considered a female and allowed to use the women’s bathroom.

The problem with progressive thinking is that black is white, male is female, and as Orwell observed in 1984, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” After all, if one can destroy words, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL IS A-OKAY, IF YOU’RE GAY!: It would make a snazzy t-shirt slogan. And sadly, it’s true: The University of Oklahoma has announced plans to provide a separate but equal student lounge for LGBT+++++ students. Apparently, the university’s decision was prompted by a request from an LGBT student organization, which actually wants to be segregated from the rest of the student body:

Human relations sophomore David Martin is excited about the study room because it will allow students to hang out in a comfortable place without judgement or bullying. LGBTQ students will be able to comfortably socialize and be with their significant other without fear, he said.

“It goes back to having a safe haven … having a safe place will help students be themselves, and provide the opportunity to reduce harassment,” Martin said.

So let’s get this straight (pun intended): Instead of working to ensure that LGBT students aren’t harassed and treated equally, the University of Oklahoma–a public university subject to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment–thinks it’s better to offer a segregated “safe space” for LGBT students? Seriously?

How about a taxpayer-funded “safe space” for conservatives, or pro-life students, or even (gasp!) white men? Would the University of Oklahoma think such spaces would be important to furthering its mission of inclusion and diversity, too? Yeah, we know the answer. Oh well, it will make an interesting lawsuit.